New Zealand Literature
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
ENGL331 New Zealand Literature Dylan Horrocks Hicksville, by permission Trimester 1, 2008 School of English, Film, Theatre & Media Studies 1 New Zealand Literature Class sessions Lecture: Monday, Friday 3.10pm – 4.00pm Hugh Mackenzie LT002 Weekly tutorials: Tutorials begin on 2 nd week of trimester; tutorial lists will be posted on the English noticeboard and on Blackboard. Each student attends eleven tutorials. Attendance at eight or more is required. The tutorials are a very important part of your development in the subject, and you should prepare fully for them by reading and being ready to contribute to the discussion. Course Organisation Convener: Mark Williams [email protected] 463 6810 (internal: 6810) office VZ 911 Lecturers: Mark Williams (MW) Jane Stafford (JS) [email protected] VZ905 Erin Mercer (EM) [email protected] VZ910 Hamish Clayton (HC) [email protected] Tutors: Tutors’ information will be posted on the Blackboard site. Blackboard • Updated information about the course, and all handouts etc relating to the course, are posted on the Blackboard site for this course. • Joining in the discussion about texts and issues on the class blackboard site is encouraged. • Access to the blackboard site is available through http://blackboard.vuw.ac.nz/ Aims, Objectives, Content The course is designed to expose you to a range of concepts relevant to more advanced students in literature; it will equip you with an understanding of the cultural and historical contexts of the material you are studying; and it will foster your ability to respond critically to a range of literary and theatrical texts and present your findings in formal assessment tasks. Course Objectives By the end of the course you should: 2 • be familiar with all of the texts studied in the course; • have developed some sense of the comparative historical and cultural contexts of the range of texts studied; • be able to read texts critically and discuss your findings in a formal academic essay; • be responsive to the detail of selected passages of literature and demonstrate your responsiveness in a variety of assessment tasks; Required texts (in order of teaching) • Katherine Mansfield, Selected Stories: Katherine Mansfield, ed., Angela Smith (Oxford UP) • Selected Poems of James K. Baxter, ed., Paul Millar (Oxford UP). • Paula Morris, Hibiscus Coast (Penguin) • Bill Manhire, Collected Poems 1967-1999 (Victoria UP) A course reader containing critical articles and primary texts not in the required reading will be available from Student Notes. Class sessions This course consists of four units, each of which addresses a specific literary, cultural, historical and critical context. Unit I will deal with Katherine Mansfield, focusing on the contexts of colonialism and modernism and on the critical controversies which they have generated. Unit II will consist of an in-depth reading of James K. Baxter, with particular attention to the Jerusalem commune and the 1960s. Unit III will examine Paula Morris’ 2005 novel, Hibiscus Coast. Unit IV will look at Bill Manhire’s poetry and consider his association with the ‘Wellington School’. 3 week starting Monday lecture Friday lecture tutorial topic 25 Feb Introduction Mansfield (MW) no tutorial (MW) 3 Mar Mansfield (MW) Mansfield (MW) Mansfield 10 Mar Mansfield (MW) Mansfield (MW) Mansfield 17 Mar Mansfield (MW) Easter Mansfield 24 Mar Easter Baxter (MW) Baxter 31 Mar Baxter (MW) Film: ‘Road to Baxter Jerusalem’ 7 Apr Baxter (MW) Baxter (MW) Baxter Essay 1 due mid-trimester break mid-trimester break mid-trimester break 28 Apr Hibiscus Hibiscus Hibiscus Coast (EM) Coast (EM) Coast 5 May Hibiscus Hibiscus Hibiscus Coast (EM) Coast (EM) Coast 12 May Hibiscus Manhire Manhire Coast and (MW) art fraud Essay 2 (HC) due 19 May Manhire Manhire Manhire (MW) (MW) 26 May Manhire wrap up Exam preparation (MW) 4 Assessment: In order to pass this course, you need to hand in all pieces of written work. Additionally, according to the rules of the School, you also need to attend at least 8 of the tutorials in order to pass this course. For a course at 300-level, it is recommended that you spend on average 15 hours per week including class contact hours. Therefore, you should spend about 12 hours of your own time on reading, research and preparation. All written work must be in an acceptable academic format. A referencing guide produced for students in the English programme is attached to the end of this document. The deadlines for term work must be strictly observed. If you need an extension beyond the due date of any piece of work, you need to apply to your tutor before the due date, providing supporting documentation if possible. If an extension is granted, work will be marked in the usual way. If an extension is not applied for, or not granted, the final mark will be reduced by one ‘step’ of the grade (eg from A to A- or B- to C+). Each of these assessments has been designed to focus on a different aspect of the overall objectives of the course. Assessment % of final mark Due date Essay #1 (Mansfield) 25 11 April (4pm) Essay #2 (Baxter) 25 16 May (4pm) Final exam 50 tba 25% Essay #1 (Mansfield) Due by 4pm Friday 11 April: place in essay box, 8 th floor Von Zedlitz. You may send the essay as an email attachment by arrangement with your tutor. Be careful to retain a copy. Length: 2000 words. 25% Essay #2 (Baxter) Due by 4pm Friday 16 May: place in essay box, 8 th floor Von Zedlitz. Length: 2000 words. 50% Final examination The three-hour exam is made up of three sections: Section A is focused on Hibiscus Coast; Section B is focused on Bill Manhire; Section C allows students to address a general topic and may draw on any of the authors studied in this course. Students must answer one question from each section. Sections A and B are each worth 30 marks each; Section C is worth 40 marks. Bibliography: 5 Baxter: Baxter, James K. In Beginnings: New Zealand Writers Tell How They Began Writing. Wellington: Oxford University Press, 1980. Broughton, William. ‘A Discursive Essay about Jerusalem’. WLWE, 14 (1975): 69-90. Brown, Danielle. ‘James K. Baxter: The identification of the “Poet” and the Authority of the “Prophet”’. JNZL, 13 (1995): 133-42. Curnow, Allen. Look Back Harder: Critical Writings, 1935-1984. Ed. Peter Simpson. Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1987. Hawes, Tara. ‘A Tribesman Cut Off from His Tribe: Baxter and the Family’. JNZL, 13 (1995): 39-45. James, Trevor. "Poetry in the Labyrinth: The Poetry of James K. Baxter" World Literature Written in English, 22:2 (Autumn 1983): 342-351. Jensen, Kai. Whole Men. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1996. Journal of New Zealand Literature, 13 (1995). [This is a special issue of articles on Baxter] Manhire, Bill. ‘Events and Editorials’. Islands, 31-32 (1981): 102-20. McKay, Frank. James K. Baxter as Critic. Auckland: Heinemann Educational Books, 1978. McKay, Frank. The Life of James K. Baxter. Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1990. Needham, John. "An Excursion to a New Jerusalem". PN Review, 21:7 (Sept-Oct. 1995): 8-11. O’Sullivan, Vincent. James K. Baxter. Wellington: Oxford University Press, 1976. Oliver, W.H. James K. Baxter: A Portrait. Auckland: Godwit Press/Bridget Williams Books, 1994. Riach, Alan. “James K. Baxter and the Dialect of the Tribe”. In Opening the Book: New Essays on New Zealand Literature. Eds Mark Williams and Michele Leggott. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1995. Simpson, Peter. ‘The Trick of Standing Upright: Allen Curnow and James K. Baxter’. WLWE, 26 no 2 (1986): 369-78. Stead, C.K. ‘From Wystan to Carlos: Modern and Modernism in New Zealand Poetry’. Islands, 27 (1979): 473-81. Mansfield: Antony Alpers. The Life of Katherine Mansfield. London: OUP, 1983) Pamela Dunbar. Radical Mansfield: Double Discourse in Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997. *Charles Ferrall and Jane Stafford, eds. Katherine Mansfield’s Men: Perspectives from the 2004 Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Lecture Series. Wellington: Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society in association with Steele Roberts, 2004. Kate Fullbrook.Katherine Mansfield. Brighton: Harvester, 1989. Susan Gubar.“The Birth of the Artist as Heroine: (Re)production, the Künstlerroman Tradition, and the Fiction of Katherine Mansfield. ” In The Representation of Women in Fiction.Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1981, edited by Carolyn G Heilbrun and Margaret R. Higonnet. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983) : 19-59. Clare Hanson, ed. The Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987. *Sydney Jane Kaplan. Katherine Mansfield and the Origins of Modernist Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Katherine Mansfield.The Urewera Notebook, edited by Ian A. Gordon. Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1978.) J.M. Murry. Katherine Mansfield and Other Literary Studies. London: Constable, 1959. *Rhoda B. Nathan, ed. Critical Essays on Katherine Mansfield. New York: G.K. Hall, 1993. 6 Bridget Orr.“The Only Free People in the Empire: Gender Difference in Colonial Discourse.” In De-Scribing Empire: Post-Colonialism and Textuality. London: Routledge, 1994. Bridget Orr. “Reading with the Taint of the Pioneer: Katherine Mansfield and Settler Criticism,” Landfall 43 no. 4 (December 1989): 447-61. Mary Paul. “‘Bliss’ and Why Ignorance Won’t Do: The Use of Criticism and Theory in Current Reading Practices.” In Opening the Book: New Essays on New Zealand Writing, edited by Mark Williams and Michele Leggott. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1995): 311-31. *Roger Robinson, ed. Katherine Mansfield: In from the Margin. Baton Rouge and London: Louisana University University Press, 1994. Frank Sargeson. “Katherine Mansfield.” In Conversation on a Train and Other Critical Writings, edited by Kevin Cunningham. Auckland: Auckland University Press/Oxford University Press, 1983): 28-33.